Biden announces he's authorized 5,000 troops to Afghanistan to ensure "orderly and safe drawdown"

[riversedge]

Source: CNN




33 min ago



President Joe Biden announced in a statement on Saturday the deployment of an additional 5,000 troops to Afghanistan, “to make sure we can have an orderly and safe drawdown of US personnel and other allied personnel and an orderly and safe evacuation of Afghans who helped our troops during our mission and those at special risk from the Taliban advance.”

Biden is also announcing a series of actions aimed at deescalating the ongoing situation in Afghanistan, including directing the intel community “to ensure that we will maintain the capability and the vigilance to address future terrorist threats from Afghanistan,” tasking Secretary of State Tony Blinken with supporting Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, conveying to Taliban representatives in Doha “that any action on their part on the ground in Afghanistan, that puts US personnel or our mission at risk there, will be met with a swift and strong US military response,” and tasking Ambassador Tracey Jacobson with efforts “to process, transport, and relocate Afghan special immigrant visa applicants and other Afghan allies.”

“When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor— which he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 of 2019—that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021 deadline on US forces,” Biden wrote. “Shortly before he left office, he also drew US forces down to a bare minimum of 2,500. Therefore, when I became President, I faced a choice—follow through on the deal, with a brief extension to get our forces and our allies’ forces out safely, or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country’s civil conflict.”........................................




Read more: https://www.cnn.com/webview/world/live-news/afghanistan-taliban-us-troops-intl-08-14-21/h_2fca39dae35f7b2102465404bc3ea87a

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Link to tweet

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Taliban fighters stand on a vehicle along the roadside in Kandahar, Afghanistan on August 13. AFP/Getty Images

[bahboo]

1. REALLY glad he mentioned his predecessor's role....

now, will the media?

[Dream Girl]

2. Nah, there's having too much fun with this!

[FormerRepukeR]

3. Good...

If I was writing a fictional novel based on our leaving Afghanistan, I would have found every single woman there, given them an assault rifle (maybe two or three), plenty of ammunition and good training, and then left, but as we all know, this is not a fantasy story with a happy ending.

[MFM008]

4. what like Saigon?

much of the Afghan army is surrendering --
the taliban is getting our equipment
the news is bad
the pictures look bad
things will get worse.

[AkFemDem]

6. Very much so. Let's just call it vietstan...

And both parties own this twenty year failure that’s ending in epic catastrophe. It’s a loss for the Afghani people, a loss for the US military, a loss for American tax payers and a loss for the many politicians who co-signed this over the years- especially the original architects- GWB and Dick Cheney.

[onetexan]

12. No both party crap here. It needs to be squarely owned by bush

This is not obama's or bidens fault.

[jarfish0]

5. Timers R 4 Ovens!

This is very bad and hopeless for the Afghani residents.
However the squeeze of prior plans that require swift actions made by the US are immanent, decades have come and gone and we need a different result! so a different action must prevail. Our former guy fudged this "go figure," we have little choice but to preserve our people and the people that aided our missions there.
God speed....

[Evolve Dammit]

7. This was predictable and is embarrassing. Poorly executed. Hope loss of life is minimal. nt

[ancianita]

8. I don't get what you mean. Maybe we're reading different sources?

The U.S. has dedicated military evac bases in Qatar & can handle 1,000's per day. This will be done.
Fact is, we've evacuated thousands of personnel and troops before.

The Guardian says it's going well. -- all things considered.

I mean, you know Democratic administrations here don't get evenhanded perspective from corporate media, right?

We did learn from Vietnam because a) we've already established dedicated evacuation bases in Qatar and elsewhere with thousands of helicopters, and b) we've made sure that the Taliban won't get near Kabul for another 30 days.

Seriously. It's just not gonna be another rooftop clusterfuck like Vietnam, and we'll have airlifted and processed tens of thousands more this time. If we can't change male Muslim hearts and minds, at least we're saving lives, even if we can't save half the population that's hostage to the fundamentalists there.

I realize we all don't feel good about it, and no military withdrawal is perfect, but still, our civilian commander-in-chief is doing his job, right?

[onetexan]

14. The fact the US sent troops to secure Kabul airport is precisely the point

Get in, extract, get out. As Biden has said, the war has been 20 yrs too long & fruitless. Its best to brunt the inevitable & get out. We shld have never stirred up the ant's nest in the first place. Uknow what happens when ants are disturbed - they jusy migrate somewhere else to build their mound.

Best thing US could do is help the Afghans who corroborated w us during the US occupation past 20 yrs. The Afghan gov & ppl dont want us there & theor army has been trained. They need to muster the will to defend themselves.

Whether we choose to end it or continue, there w be casualties. Conflict is not a pretty thing & shld only be entered as a last resort, something bush was too stupid to recognize.

[muriel_volestrangler]

15. "the Taliban won't get near Kabul for another 30 days" was obviously not the case when you posted

and even less so by now. Qatar is over 1,000 miles from Kabul, further with the necessary detour around Iranian airspace. Helicopters in Qatar are irrelevant.

[ancianita]

16. Not obvious since no one's linked quotes on the situation contrary to what John Kirby represented.

Yesterday I posted yesterday's Guardian report and its Kirby reference.

Yes, the situation is now more fluid now than intelligence predicted. Ghani's flown the country. We and allies are sole defenders of the airport and embassies. Qatar helicopters are irrelevant only across countries because flight speed now matters.

Chinooks and Blackhawks are busy around Kabul, though. So if it's 3 hours per transport flight from Qatar to Kabul for military and civilian transport planes to load up evacuees, one can speculate that they need to hold for at least a week to get near the evacuation goal.

The White House is as shocked as anyone about this. So I was wrong. Looks like it's Saigon again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/15/world/asia/us-evacuation-kabul.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. Very obvious. In LBN from 12 hours before you posted:

The Taliban seized two more provinces on Saturday and approached the outskirts of Afghanistan’s capital while also launching a multi-pronged assault on a major northern city defended by former warlords, Afghan officials said.

The insurgents have captured much of northern, western and southern Afghanistan in a breakneck offensive less than three weeks before the United States is set to withdraw its last troops, raising fears of a full militant takeover or another Afghan civil war.

The Taliban captured all of Logar province, just south of the capital, Kabul, and detained local officials, said Hoda Ahmadi, a lawmaker from the province. She said the Taliban have reached the Char Asyab district, just 11 kilometers (7 miles) south of Kabul.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142785080

[ancianita]

18. Welp, ya got me.

I might have read it, but discounted danger when distance was never clear with reports using the word "near," and US intelligence saying the captured towns were in "nearby" provinces.

It wasn't until I read that the WH and Pentagon were scrambling this am that I knew Biden's speech and Ghani's speeches were reassurances that fell flat.

[Slammer]

10. timeline

These additional 5000 aren't going to arrive in time to do anything other than need to be immediately airlifted out.

The 3000 that Biden ordered last week (the amount they estimated would be needed just to secure the airport and make sure the embassy personnel could make it to the airport in an emergency) haven't even arrived yet or at least hadn't as of late Saturday.

BTW, those 71,000 interpreters and their families who we promised would be evacuated out on commercial flights out of Kabul?

Every seat on every commercial flight is full because everyone in Afghanistan who has a passport is desperately trying to get out of the country.

So there's still no plan, at all, to get those 71,000 out of the country. And that's not even counting the 100,000 or more additional people that the Biden administration two weeks ago promised they'd get out because they had been assisting US media organizations.

At some point the administration is going to have to pour a meaningful amount of resources into solving the problem aka 1)sending in a large number of US airplanes to evacuate people before the Taliban gets close enough to the airport to take regular potshots at the flights plus 2) evacuate huge numbers of people before they've been completely cleared through the visa application process.

And especially since the embassy in Kabul, which is doing all the processing of the applications, is already downsizing its staff in anticipation of having to bug out.

Or if the administration doesn't want to pour in the resources to fix the problem it created by not having a plan started before the withdrawal was announced, it needs to publicly acknowledge that fact and let the people we're going to strand in Kabul flee to the countryside. That way some of them might have a small chance of making it out of the country despite the roadblocks and patrols.

And if they're killed for having helped the US, it'll be on some back road in the middle of nowhere rather than in large-scale executions in Kabul broadcast for their propaganda value to the Taliban.

[Devil Child]

13. Good post, I suspect the window for escape has passed

Quite a disaster unfolding.

[Slammer]

20. embassy

Early Sunday the US embassy in Kabul has announced that they're ceasing all operations. So no more processing visas at all.
https://apnews.com/article/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-1794266cda1492f4128363572bc2cff6

The military is looking for options to evacuate embassy personnel since the airport has started to receive enemy fire. Most if not all commercial airlines will choose to cease service rather than fly in and out while people are actively shooting at their airplanes.

It's sometimes depressing when I'm right...

[Martin68]

19. Too little, too late?

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

21. My nephew is one of those troops.

His mom is climbing the walls..............understandbly so.